Broken Path
by Alicester the Trickster
Summary: Jess knew the rules. She broke them anyway. Prompting Becker to risk his life to find her and keep her safe.


Author's Note: I started watching Primeval less than three weeks ago. I am already addicted to the Jess/Becker moments. They are just so cute together. This story is set after series 5 so there will be minor spoilers present.

Summary: Jess knew the rules. She broke them anyway. Prompting Becker to risk his life to find her and keep her safe.

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><p>Chapter One<p>

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><p>It had been a long seven months. Jess stifled a yawn as she drove. Between the near apocalypse, Philip's death, and the attack on Lester, the ARC was struggling to rebuild itself. There was too much work needing done and too few people to do it. Some had quit after the convergence; shaken by the near miss. Without Philip as a benefactor, the ARC was running low on funds as well. For weeks, Jess waited for the news to pack her bags and go.<p>

If it wasn't for the fact the government feared the anomalies stronger than ever after the convergence, they probably would have shut the place down. Instead, they scrambled to find a way to fund their top secret organization after the Burton's death. Lester, just returning to his post, actually came up with a brilliant solution. He proposed the ARC be funded through a variety of private companies. In return for their investment, the companies would gain the rights to the discoveries made in the lab but no access or control over the team's work in the field. At first it was difficult to get investors to sign up under such specifications but eventually enough groups came on board that the ARC was up and running again.

They even had the money to make a few improvements. New safe rooms within the ARC had been added in case of an animal escape. The old lockdown procedures had been completely redone. Lastly, stronger but more concealable EMDs had been put on order two weeks ago; both Matt and Becker were eager to test them out upon arrival.

Jess frowned sadly. It felt like Becker had been ignoring her even since the convergence occurred. At first she thought she was imagining it. The ARC was undergoing a lot of changes and as the newly appointed Head of Internal Security, Becker had to put in a lot of hours devising new security measures and getting the new trainees up to speed. She told herself she was overreacting, acting like a silly schoolgirl who was blowing things completely out of proportion.

Except, the others still saw Becker. Matt told her they occasionally played a game of basketball on the weekends. Connor usually sat with him in the canteen. Abby even said they occasionally sparred in one of the training rooms. Becker still saw and socialized with all the members of the team except her. For some reason, she was being singled out and excluded. It reminded her of high school and being the youngest kid in her class. Skipping through grades like a teenager changing clothes, she never felt like she fully fit in with her classmates. Although they didn't pick on her, they never tried to include her in anything. And six years later, the pattern was repeating itself. The only time she talked to Becker these days was when she was directing him towards an anomaly.

A cheerful jingle from her purse interrupted her thoughts. With one eye on the car in front of her, Jess reached over to dig her phone out.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Where are you?"

Jess laughed when she recognized her sister's voice. "I'm on my way, Beth." she said.

"You've left work already?"

Her skeptical tone would be amusing if not for the fact she left work an hour late. "Yes," Jess said, increasing her speed to make up for the lost time.

"Do you think you'll make it in time for dinner?"

Jess glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was already past 6:30. "I'll be a little late so you should start without me."

"Alright," Beth said sighing, "see you when you get here."

"Twenty minutes," Jess said brightly, "I promise!"

"You promised you would come two months ago too."

Jess huffed. She loved her sister but sometimes Beth was a bit of a nag. "Something came up."

Actually it was five somethings. A group of raptors had invaded a library in Cambridge. Becker had lost two men in the fight and four civilians had died before they even arrived on site. She hadn't even remembered to call Beth to let her know she wouldn't make it out until the next morning. Beth hadn't been too pleased if the six voicemails she left were any indication.

"Does it ever occur to you to tell them no?" Beth asked.

Jess gritted her teeth. She had variations of this conversation so many times with so many different family members. And it never got any easier. "My job is important to me."

"So is your family, remember?"

"Beth…" Jess shook her head, sometimes working for top secret organization really sucked. She hated lying to everyone. "I don't want to fight with you. I'll be there soon, okay?"

Beth sighed, "Yeah, see you soon."

Jess hung up feeling disappointed. Her sister wasn't wrong with what she said. Jess hadn't had a vacation since she started at the ARC and the few times she tried to make it up for a long weekend with the family something always came up. Unfortunately, her sister like the rest of her family was no longer accepting her excuses about long hours and work emergencies. But it wasn't Jess' fault that dinosaurs refused to appear during normal nine to five hours. It also didn't help matters that her family thought she was working as part of a think tank for a major pharmaceutical company. She hated the fact she couldn't tell them about her real job. Her father in particular took it hard that she hadn't "pursued a career worthy of her potential." He always said he was proud of her but she could tell he wished she had pursed a more challenging career. If he only knew.

Jess checked her gage then switched lanes to pull off the road for a petrol station. Her sister lived out in the country and she forgot to fill up before she left the city. Actually that wasn't quite true. Jess had remembered but the price of petrol in the city was higher than out on the road. Plus, it would be nice to stop and take a breather. Once she got to the farm, she would be surrounded. It was her grandmother's eightieth birthday and most of her extended family had descended to Beth's house to celebrate the occasion, including her Aunt Louise. A wonderful lady, but a woman set in her ways. The fact that Jess had chosen to immerse herself in work rather than a relationship was a frequent conversation topic for Aunt Louise.

Jess filled the tank and headed inside to pay. She smiled at the old man sitting outside the store. He nodded back and continued carving. An army of wind chimes hung above his head and he had several more incomplete ones at his feet. Some of them had been painted but most just had the gleam of regular polished wood.

Once inside, she made a beeline for the candy stacks. She grabbed a bar of chocolate before heading to the register. She loved her family but sometimes it helped to have coping mechanisms for their well-meaning needling. Chocolate had always done the trick. Before the weekend was out she would probably be back for more.

The man rang up her purchases and gave her a smile. She ignored the flirtatious grin and simply thanked him. Jess pushed open the door and headed back to her car. She was nearly there when she heard the tinkling of the wind chimes. She was about to comment to man carving them about how pretty they sounded when she realized something. There wasn't any wind. She looked around. All the wind chimes where gyrating and yet there wasn't even a trace of a breeze. She swallowed nervously; a feeling of dread entered her stomach. She had read all the mission reports; she knew Connor had set up makeshift chimes in the Cretaceous Period to signal the presence of an anomaly.

Jess walked stiffly to her car and put the chocolate bar inside and grabbed her phone from the seat. She would just take a quick look around. It was probably nothing; wind chimes didn't _prove _the presence of an anomaly. It could just be a fluke, a weird crazy fluke.

She walked around to the back of the building, chewing her bottom lip. She was being ridiculous. Paranoid even. There was no way that the one time she finally made it out of the office, she would stumble across an anomaly. Except, the feeling of dread was getting bigger now. And she could still here the ring of the wind chimes. She saw the old outhouse building in the back and kept walking. Just another minute or two and she would be able to go back to her car and pretend nothing had ever happened. A few feet beyond the outhouse, she felt her keys stir in her hands as if being pulled by some invisible force. Then she heard it, a gentle whooshing sound. Slowly, she turned her head.

It was like looking into a golden prism suspended in the air. It was beautiful and terrifying. And for a moment all she could do was stare at it in wonder. Then she remembered just how dangerous anomalies could be. It needed to be locked quickly before anyone was hurt. She opened her phone to call it in and waited for someone to pick up. As she waited for an answer, she realized she wasn't alone. A little girl stood near the anomaly, her hand reaching out in wonder. Jess dropped her phone.

"No!" she screamed running towards the child.

The girl stepped into the anomaly and disappeared in an instant. A half second later, Jess did too.


End file.
